Avengers #115. The Avengers/Defenders War; Part 1.

Everybody loves a good cliffhanger - well, apart from people who're hanging from a cliff - and so I've decided to give you Steve Does Comics: The Serial, by looking at one of my favourite multi-part stories of the 1970s; the Avengers v the Defenders' Evil Eye Saga.

For those who don't know, it's a tale in which the forces of evil, for reasons most nefarious, conspire to pit the Avengers against their less-celebrated counterparts.

It all kicks off in The Avengers #115 but in somewhat inauspicious circumstances, as the bulk of the mag's taken up with a less than classic tale of the Avengers blundering around the English countryside, having a ridiculously hard time of battling a handful of troglodytes. Needless to say it's an England no Englishman would ever recognise, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that, right at the end when, like some people who're on the pitch, we think it's all over, we get a three page epilogue with Loki falling from a cliff, having been blinded in his last encounter with Thor.

Will he die?

Of course not.

For one thing, he's a god and it's hard to believe such a fall could kill a deity who's almost as strong as Thor.

The more important reason is that, just as he's about to impact, the dread Dormammu rescues him by teleporting him to his dead dimension and forging an alliance with him. Like many super-villain team-ups, it's hard to know why the instigator wants it. To be honest, you get the feeling that maybe they just feel lonely sometimes. Dormammu probably does, as, seen here, his vast empire seems to consist entirely of a floating boulder. Regardless, they shake hands on the deal and, from that moment on, we know a whole heap of trouble's in store for our heroes...

To Be Continued.